Learning Medicine

The Ultimate Guide to Study Skills in Medical School

Monday, February 11, 2013

An Update on my Cards and Future Directions

Hi all,

It's been a while. You'll notice that some changes have occurred around here. I changed the layout of the blog a bit. I'm toying around with different looks, so you'll likely see more changes in the next few days. I want to make the blog cleaner and more accessible.

My near term goal is to transition to a new blog. I'll keep DrWillBe up and live mostly for my Anki cards, but I'm transitioning to a blog with a different name. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons:

(1) I want the new blog's name to reflect the fact that my focus is not just medicine. When I created DrWillBe, it was right before starting med school, and I intended to focus mostly on that. But I want to use my new blog as a platform to talk about multiple topics, and the name should reflect that.
(2) I want to use this new blog project as a way for me to learn some web development skills. So it will have a custom feel and more features, hopefully ones that I code myself using some CSS/HTML and Javascript.
(3) I plan to write much more regularly.

Regarding my Anki cards...
I love that so many people have downloaded them and are benefitting from them in their studies. Nothing makes me happier! Most all my decks will remain up on here. See the new Anki Decks link at the nav bar.

One major change: I've removed my Pathology deck. This is my most comprehensive and popular deck, so why have I removed it?

Well, my plan is to update the deck, clean it up, organize things more, add more cards, new media... pretty much I want to add more value to this already valuable deck. I've already spent 100's of hours putting this deck together, and I'm going to put even more time in sprucing it up. Because of this, I plan to charge a small fee for downloading the Pathology deck. All my other decks will remain free to download.

The new path deck should be ready in a few weeks. Until then, sit tight and check out the new changes happening here at DrWillBe.

Thanks for visiting my blog and for inspiring me to continue to write and share my learning resources.

10 comments:

I am 100% with you! Personally, I think your review of pathology and your entire deck has so much more value than all those expensive and sometimes useless usmle courses that just repeat the same dull information over and over again!

Your deck has helped me so much with step 1!

Please consider in the future for a comprehensive step 2 ck deck. I am willing to put money down for that and I am sure alot of other will want to follow! You can make a poll or list of interested members and see if its worth your time to make one.

Again many thanks! Your decks are always amazing and I just trust your deck making skills more than any other professional out there!

1- Also I i am with you 100% and I will buy the pathology deck :)2- we will extremely be pleased if you do a step 2 ck deck and we will be ready to buy it. Please consider this step :)3- What about the anatomy deck ?? will you finish working on it soon????

Hey David. No anatomy deck is in the works, and I don't foresee that changing. But, an idea - you can use this blog as a way to reach out to other students, and you guys can crowdsource a deck. I'm going to set up a way to do that hopefully for a lot of things.

Do you have any suggestions for using your decks along with classes as they are being taken? Your decks are amazing, but having just started pharm a few weeks ago the deck looks overwhelming, and I'm not sure how to tinker it so that I can learn along with what is being taught.

Count me in as willing to pay for a Step 2 deck! As well as the new improved path deck.

Hey. Use my decks in conjunction with the course. There is nothing in them that you won't see in class. I used mostly First Aid and Katzung Review to make the cards. They're tagged by system and class. When you go over a certain topic (say, cardiovascular drugs, or antiarrhythmics), use the 'custom study' function and only select the tags that pertain to the overlap between your class. You will continue to see these cards in your daily review, even when class has moved on to different topics, but that's the point. All your classmates will be forgetting while you're not.

i am really excited about the possibility of using your decks as i am a first year. the physiology one would be particularly helpful right now. however i am having trouble finding them in the "nav bar" - am i missing something obvious?

at the risk of sounding like a complete idiot...where is the file? when i go to the nav bar all i see is a search bar, and then a "More" tab which has "share by email" or "share with facebook" or "share with twitter" options. the only other thing on the nav bar is "Next Blog."